Golden Ticket
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
Explore friendship, academic anxiety, and what it means to be special, in this story that "offers young readers a hopeful way of looking at failure and mistakes..." according to The New York Times
Eleven-year-old Ash McNulty is one of the “gifted and talented” kids at her school, spending most of her day in a special class with a few other advanced students. As the end of fifth grade rolls around, she should be on top of the world. According to everyone, she’s going to rock junior high!
But Ash has a secret: She can’t keep up with her advanced classmates anymore. The minute she asks for help though, everyone will know she’s not who they think she is. She’s not so smart. She might not even be that special. And her parents will be crushed to discover the truth.
If Ash can win the Quiz Bowl, though, that will show everyone that she is still on top. If she gets a lucky break ahead of time, all the better.
Except that “lucky break” backfires . . .
And Ash is left to question everything she thought she knew about school, friends, and success.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Aisling "Ash" McNulty's small Maine town, everyone comes out for the Quigley School Quiz Bowl, an annual fundraiser, plus "a party and a contest all rolled into one." A fifth grader almost always wins the top prize, but in last year's upset, then-fourth-grader Ash took the win. She's determined to secure a repeat victory at the upcoming contest, especially since she's been secretly falling behind in the school's gifted and talented program. One parent criticizes the program, calling it a "golden ticket" for the 2% of students who ace a test in the second grade: "The best teacher, for such a tiny group of students. Who wouldn't succeed in a class like that?" But Ash's identity and hopes for the future—involving her Irish emigrant parents' pressure regarding getting a good education—are wrapped up in the program, and when she comes across the quiz bowl answers, she takes what she feels is a clear route "to keep being a ‘good' kid." Through realistically flawed characters and engaging third-person prose, Egan (the Magic Shop series) explores resource allocation, internal and external definitions of success, and what it means to be "gifted." Characters read as white. Ages 8–12.
